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 Chicago alt-rock combo built around core members Laura Caragher and Liska Swanstrom who share guitar and vocal duties. Additional members include Richard Glassman, bass; Shad Swanstrom, drums; and Brady, guitar. (Caragher also appears on Brady's fantastic solo debut On My Own) They have a self-titled 1997 debut CD (distributed via Red&Babs Records). They take the standard acoustic-based folk rock with twin female vocal harmonies and add a bit of alternative attitude and more complex song structure to come up with a sound that, while not altogether new, is solid and very listenable. Their sound is a moody and atmospheric, though very melodic, take on alterna rock: something like the Indigo Girls heavily filtered through Dead Can Dance. (Don't take the IG comparison too strongly though; unlike the Indigo Girls, SJ is non-preachy and bears repeated listening with enjoyment where repeated Indigo Girl spins are most likely to produce nausea in the listener.) The opening track, "Fall," has an Us-era Peter Gabriel-esqe feel and, like the record as a whole, includes some fantastic harmonies. Track 5 (though it is mis-numbered on the cover as #6; tracks 5 and 6 are transposed on the disc itself), "Clear Picture," is a catchy love song with an upbeat tempo and nice depth due to some well-chosen violin parts. The next track, "Untitled," which seems to act as the bitter counter-point to "Clear Picture," has a nice violin bit as well, though it has a deeper and mellower tone, giving the song a gloomier feel. Perhaps the most complex and fully-realized song on the record is "Flutter." Again, violin (played by Biff U. Blumfumgagne) is one of the more important elements in this song; however, instead of adding atmospheric touches, the violin is central the song with the guitars and drums very muted and restrained. Somewhat inscrutable lyrics and overt Christ references combined with the gloomy Eastern-European dirge-sounding strings make this oddly affecting track one of the stand-outs of the record. All in all a solid debut that indicates solid future potential.
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